The morning news. [volume] (Savannah, Ga.) 1887-1900, 1887-09-21
A WANDERING RAILRoADER
A Man Who Never Wants job Longer
Than Six Months.
F'on the Macon Ca Telegraph.

From. the Macon (Ga.) Telegraph.
There is an odd genius engaged in the
railroad business who has worked on every
foot of the freight trains from the foot-rest
of the pilot as fagman to the caboose as
conductor, and often in his career has been
the conductor on the limited express. He
says his home is wherever he hangs up his
hat, but really Macon is his native town.
He has worked on every road in the United
States, and a few weeks ago he came back
from six months Job ON a Mexican railroad.
he is of a tidgety, restless nature, and job
OF more than six months duration grows
monotonous. When he gives up one position
he hops ON another road and takes any
place offered him, whether it be train-hand
or engineer, brakeman or conductor. If he
starts at the lowest round he soon works his
way up, as he is one of the best railroad
men in tho country As might be supposed,
a man of such extensive travel and ups and
downs would be full of rich experiences.
Having worked on all the roads. from those
characterized in the famous remark of the
late Col Wadley as being two stroaks of
rust and a right of way" to the finest
ballasted double track, he can tell you
without hesitation the inner side of any
road i'll the country. He thinks the Arkansas
roads the worst in the world and tells some
hard things about them. On one of these
roads the people in some of the towns ring the
church bells whenever the train gets in on
time. During the six months he worked on
the road the bells rang twice. A train
starts out and then stops all along the
line sometimes for repairs and sometimes
to wait on a sick engineer One train laid
up at a little town 30 long that they ran
our friend, who was the conductor, for
town marshal and elected him. He was
able to be sworn in and make several
coed with his train. A drummer hoped on
his train one Saturday night and asked him
what time he was due in Little Rock. Our
friend replied, "Well, we'll probably get
there some time tonight | hope, but we
were due there last Monday morning. He
says the dust out there is simply awful 1t
is not only black but accumulates in drifts.
1t was often the case that all hands and the
passengers were compelled to get out and
shovel the dust from the track before the
train could proceed. 1t was often that this
dust would blacken the faces of his crew so
that he could not tell them and many a time
he has asked them for their fare. There
was one fiagman SO completely disguised by
the dust that the conductor wouldn't be
lieve him to be one of his own hands until
he produced his switch key And so it went.
He tells these stories by the yard. 1t some
times happened that when he couldn't get
job on the railroad, he would do something
else. In a Texas town he took a position as
bar tender He kept, on an average, drunk
for three months and pleased his boss until
a Baptist preacher came along. The bar
tender and the preacher became fast friends,
until one day he won all the preachers
money and he sought to get even by preach
ing a sermon to his congregation of one, and
by picturing the loneliness of the congrega-
TONS old mother in Georgia, who had none
but the fondest wishes for her erring son in
far away Texas. This sermon deeply inn
pressed the railroad bartender, and he kept
sober for five days on a stretch. At the
end of this time the owner of the bar
called him up and told him he had no
further use for him, by the way" said
the bartender, 'if you don't mind telling it,
I'd like to know what you turned me off
for" The proprietor replied: you've
been drunk for the past five days, and l
don't want any drunken men around me-"
He had mistaken the conduct of his bar
tender when sober. And column of such
experiences could be written about this
genius. He is now running a six months
job on a railroad running out of Macon,
and the next time we may hear from him
he might be in Patagonia.